. >> this is such a biglie.romney's ownadviser had to shoot it down afterthedebate. ericburnstrom was pressed about mitt romney keeping pre-existing conditions as part of his plan. he said, we'd like to sew what states do what massachusetts did. in massachusetts we have a ban on pre-existing conditions. in other words, it's not in romney's plan and they're leaving it up to the states. romney was rewarded for his skillful lying at a hero's welcome at a conservative political conference in colorado today. senior obama adviser david axelrod admitted the president can't let romney's lies go unchecked next time around. >> he made a choice last night to answer the questions that were asked and to talk to the american people about what we need to do to move forward and not to get into serial fact-checking with governor romney, which can be an exhausting, never-ending, pursuit. but obviously moving forward, you know, we're going to take a hard look at this. >> no doubt, last night was a moment of disappointment for progressives in this country. but it's not a moment of defeat. it

in there and not allowgovernorromneytosetthedebateorcontrolthedebateoruse facts that aren't real. he needs to sit there and look governor romney in the eye and say listen. you sit there and tell the american people they're not better off. tell the 5 million people that have jobs today that they're not better off. tell the 37 million people who have health care and are going to have health care that they're not better off. tell the soldiers that are coming back from iraq, back from afghanistan that they're not better off. the president needs to do a full throated defense of his presidency and not allow governor romney to define his presidency for him. this helps significantly. >> and, chris, quickly do we hear mitt romney continue to say that president obama doesn't understand the economy? does this put him in a box? >> well, to some extent but governor romney is going to use his statistics to paint his picture and we saw that. and i think this is one of the things that i would, you know, strongly recommend to the obama campaign. romney was a blizzard of statistics in that debate but a lot